


Keeping It Real

by happyaspie



Series: Tony Stark is a Good Mentor [23]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Arcades, Humor, Peter Parker Can Talk Tony Stark into Anything, Peter Parker is Such a Kid, Precious Peter Parker, Random & Short, Spidey Sense (Marvel), Spidey Sense Fail (Marvel), Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark is a Good Mentor, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-14 17:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20604440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyaspie/pseuds/happyaspie
Summary: When a new VR arcade opens up nearby Peter begs his reluctant mentor to go with him.  Once there, things get a little... frustrating because as it turns out when your Spider-man, fighting in virtual reality, and actual reality are twovery differenttasks.    Leave it to Tony to give his favorite kid a hard time.





	Keeping It Real

"Hey, Mr. Stark!", Peter called out loudly as he bounded into the lab on Friday afternoon. "Guess what?"

Having been warned of the overly enthusiastic teenager's arrival, Tony had been decently prepared for the boisterous entrance. As such he only flinched slightly and more so from the volume than a lack of anticipation. "_I don't know_... what?", Tony asked as he shook his head and hoped that the kid would stop shouting now that he had his full attention. 

Peter beamed at his mentor from across the room before sprinting across the remainder of the distance between them. "Did you hear about that new arcade place that opened up near here?"

"No. Why would I hear about that?", Tony asked in confusion before holding up a hand resignation. "I mean, besides from you.", he added because of course, Peter would be on the up and up of any new high school paradise that may, or may not, have popped up in the area. He, on the other hand, was was beyond an age where the news of a new arcade would elicit any sort of elation from him.

Looking on _slightly_ disappointed, Peter eagerly pressed on. "Well, it's not really an _arcade_, arcade. It's more of a specialized... entertainment kind of-- I don't know how to explain it.", Peter began to poorly describe before taking a more straight forward approach. "All they do is Virtual Reality. Like, games." When Tony didn't react with nearly as much enthusiasm as he felt the announcement deserved Peter attempted to coach the _correct_ reaction out of the man. "Come on Mr. Stark! It sounds completely awesome. Aren't you even a _little bit_ excited? You have to be at least interested."

Tony continued to stare at the boy blankly. What part of that was supposed to sound interesting to him? He was Iron Man for Christ's sake. His _actual_ reality was 'exciting' and 'interesting' enough. Could use a little _less_ excitement at times, really. "Kid. You do realize I'm over forty, right?"

"So?", Peter asked in mild confusion. "There's not an age limit..."

"Yeah, okay. Maybe I should have explained myself a little better.", Tony said before slowing down his speech for emphasis. "I'm too old to care about arcades, kid."

Still, unable to grasp how anyone could not be excited by the prospect of basically being emersed in a video game, Peter held out his hands in frustration. "But this is different! It's _Virtual Reality_! Don't you want to go check it out?", practically begged.

"Not especially, no.", Tony blandly replied as he turned his attention back to the wires he'd been working with before the rambunctious interruption.

Have not really expected that answer, Peter's heart sank. "Oh.", he replied simply but there was so much disappointment in that one little word that it made Tony sigh. 

Of course, it hadn't been Tony's intention to hurt the kid's feelings he just... wasn't interested. He wasn't even sure why the kid was asking him. It wasn't like he didn't have friends. "Why can't you go with Ted, Fred... Whatever his name is-- You're 'Guy in the Chair'?"

"...because it's, well, it's sort of expensive. So, I thought maybe, you know, that we could--", Peter hesitantly began only to be cut off before he could finish his thought.

"--You want me to pay for it?", Tony asked because he didn't mind. It wasn't like it was a big deal. He could probably rent the entire place out if Peter wanted him too. "Look I can give you the money or whatever--"

"--but I want to go with you, Mr. Stark. Come on, Please? It'll be fun.", Peter nearly shouted over the man's offer. While going with Ned would be fun, that definitely hadn't been his goal.

Tony rolled his eyes and smiled. "Fun? I think you're stretching my definition of fun there, kiddo."

Peter stood there quietly pacing for only a moment as he tried to come up with a new slant. Clearly, 'It'll be fun' wasn't working. He needed a more... utilitarian objective. "You know... they have hand to hand combat games. It could be like, training.", he offhandedly suggested, watching for a reaction out of the corner of his eye.

"Hmm.", Tony hummed noncommittally from his desk. It was a good try but no dice. There was no way _a game_ could replace or even supplement _actual_ hand to hand combat training. 

When Tony didn't instantly give in, Peter tried to explain his angle. "Seriously! It requires reflexes and, um, awareness and... anticipation--"

"--You realize those are all basically the same thing, right?", Tony stated with humor before Peter could get any further.

"No...", Peter retaliated, his voice rising as the single syllable was drawn out for a few beats too long. 

"Hmm", Tony hummed once again, still avoiding eye contact. He definitely didn't agree but arguing about it would more than likely get him nowhere. The kid would just stubbornly talk in circles until he managed to find himself some sort of evasive withdrawal from the conversation. One that alluded to a nonexistent agreement. In situations like these, he'd learned that it was best to just stay neutral at all cost.

"Please, Mr. Stark? We can do that and then do whatever you want to do for the rest of the afternoon. I won't even complain. Even if you ask me to clean all of the old Iron Man suits.", Peter pleaded as his fists balled up and shook them beseechingly by his sides. 

"You _like_ waxing the old Iron Man suits...", Tony replied with a small laugh. Though that wasn't completely true because the fact was the kid didn't just like it, he _loved it_. He would spend hours, humming to himself as he shined every inch of every suit stored in that lab. 

"Okay, that's fair. ...but the offer still stands.", Peter rapidly returned because maybe that wasn't the best example. He was pretty sure he could shine the Iron Man suits all day without ever growing bored. There was just something fascinating about being allowed to touch the actual Iron Man armor. Not many people could say they got to do that but he did and it made him feel important. Then before he could think too much more on the subject, Tony was giving in.

"Fine."

~o~o~o~o~o~

The first thing Tony noticed upon walking into the facility was that he was _by far_ the oldest person in the building. All of the employees seemed to be not that much older than Peter and even the manager looked as though he were fresh out of high school. The second thing he noticed was the sign by the register announcing that there were no more open time slots for the day.

Unwilling to back out of his little deal with Peter, Tony set out to negotiate their time. It took a lot of patience, a few corporate phone calls and a large sum of money but he managed it and they were soon walking down the hall towards their newly assigned area. As they did so Tony couldn't help but look at all of teenager's hooked up to the various cables and controls, looking like complete idiots as the danced around swinging at nothing tangible. How this was anyone idea of fun was beyond him. He had to keep telling himself that he was doing this for Peter. If nothing else but to keep himself from darting out the front door before anyone recognized him.

Once inside of the cubicle Peter began to eagerly go through the various game options, eventually settling on some sort of ridiculous mele style game. "Are you sure you don't want to go first?", Peter asked before readying himself to play.

"You should play.", Tony tightly replied because he actually had zero intentions of playing at all. He just sort of hoped the kid got caught up enough to not notice the passage of time allowing him to get out of this scotfree. 

Smiling with glee, Peter got everything hooked up and looked over at Tony once more before starting the game. "This is going to be easy. I bet I get the top score. How cool would that be?"

"So cool.", Tony quipped with a roll of his eyes, as Peter began to shift through the game's menus before entering what looked like some sort of demented arena. That's where, according to Peter, the 'fun' was supposed to start. Only after no more than two minutes the only one having fun was Tony because the kid was getting his butt kicked. "Top score, huh?", Tony laughed as Peter went back to restart the game with a different group of settings.

"That was a practice round. Now I know what I'm doing.", Peter groused as he readied himself to reenter the field. This time it went marginally better but he was still out within five minutes of beginning. "Ugh. There must be something wrong with the controllers. I'm going to recalibrate them.", Peter declared before doing just that as Tony looked on with amusement. _Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all._

By the time Peter was starting the game over for the third time he was back to declaring himself an expert. Tony couldn't help but smile at the boy's confidence especially when said confidence got him absolutely nowhere. Ignoring the look of annoyance on Peter's face as he removed the visor, Tony laughed. "How are you so bad at this?"

"It's harder than it looks, Mr. Stark!", Peter strained before attempting to hand over the controls. "You try it."

"Nope. You're the 'expert'. So, I'll wait here for you to get that top score, thanks.", Tony replied with a smirk as he sat himself down in the provided chair. "Go on, then."

Resisting the urge to stomp his foot, Peter, went back into the game once more before switching to a completely different battle royale but none of those rounds ended any better. He continued to get in a few good hits in before ultimately losing his ability to strike at the right moment. "Okay, I think I've got it this time.", Peter announced every time before ultimately ending up right back where he'd started.

Tony shook his head. He's seen the kid fight. Like, really fight, real people. On a regular basis. With accuracy. He'd sparred the kid himself on occasion for training and rarely got a hit in. The kid was fast, intuitive and rarely missed his mark. As such, his curiosity got the better of him and he was out of the chair before the boy could restart the next match. "Give me that. It's my turn."

Peter readily handed over the equipment before taking his mentor's place in the chair at the corner of the room. Pulling one foot up under him in the chair, he smiled because after having spent the last twenty-five minutes losing over and over again he was eager to watch Iron Man himself get taken down by a bunch of pre-programmed computer villans. Only it didn't happen that way. Tony managed to make it through the first wave without taking a single hit. Same for the second and the third. He didn't start taking any damage at all until he was halfway through the fourth and then much to Peter's combined horror and annoyance, the man just quit.

Having played the game for a solid fifteen minutes, Tony decided he'd had enough. It's not like it was that exciting. If anything the entire thing was somewhat predictable. The characters only had so many moves that they could make and for the most part, they were performed in a repetitive pattern. It wasn't until he was facing more than ten at a time that things started to get confusing but only because that's when it started to become difficult to count through the moves of each characters fight-pattern at the same time. 

"How did you do that! ...and why did you stop!", Peter cried out when Tony removed the visor and began to put everything back in its place.

"It wasn't that hard, kid. They did the same things over and over again. All you had to do was pay attention."

"I was paying attention!", Peter nearly shouted before his voice started to fade with the next words. "It's just..."

"Just what? I've seen you fight more complicated opponents while spending more time running your mouth ninety-miles-a-minutes than anything else. I swear you could dodge bullets if you needed to."

"Oh, I definitely can!", Peter chirped excitedly before realizing that maybe he should have kept that little tidbit of information to himself.

"What!", Tony strained before bringing his hands up to his temples. Clearly, he needed to update the protocols in that suit if the kid was dodging bullets without his knowledge. "...nevermind. we can talk about that later. ...What were you about to say."

Peter shifted slightly on his feet because he'd yet to come up with a good way to explain this to anyone, let alone his mentor. "Well, I have this... thing. Um... it's like a weird sixth sense or something. I can _feel it_ when I'm in danger, Mr. Stark. Like the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end."

Looking Peter over as if he'd lost his mind, Tony shook his head. "Come again?"

"When I'm in a fight I can sense what's happening and what's going to happen next. Sometimes it happens so fast that it feels like my body moves all on its own.", Peter explained before realizing that Tony had gone from looking confused to looking absolutely delighted. "What?"

"I'm trying to figure out why you just got your butt whooped over there if you have some sort of weird spider-induced ESP.", Tony replied with a wide grin. 

Taking in a deep breath because he wasn't super fond of the man making fun of his inability to play a stupid game, Peter resisted the urge to whine. "That the thing... it only works when I'm in danger, Mr. Stark.", Peter stated without humor. "This is a game. I guess my brain or DNA or whatever knows it's not a real threat."

"So what your telling me is that _I'm actually better than you_ at video games?", Tony suggested, feigning shock. Then laughing as Peter crossed his arms over his chest.

"You're better than me at_ this _video game.", Peter clarified with a smile despite the fact that he was still rather annoyed with himself for not being better at it than he was. "I can still cream you in Mario Kart."

"I don't know...", Tony replied thoughtfully. "I'm feeling fairly confident at the moment and our time in here is basically up so..."

Having already implied how his mentor intended for them to spend the rest of the afternoon, Peter challengingly pointed a finger right at Tony's chest. "You're going down, old man!"

"Excuse me?", Tony said with a laugh as his brows raised in question. Though, he couldn't decide if he should be laughing at the kid at the moment or not. It was one thing for him to call_ himself_ old. It was quite another to hear _someone else_ say it.

"Um....", Peter began, his smile growing wider with each passing moment. "I said that sound like fun, Mr. Stark?"

Deciding to have mercy on the kid, Tony nodded his head in understanding. "Mm-hmm. That's what I thought", Tony replied before taking the boy by the shoulder and urging him towards the front door. "Now, let's get out of here, kid because this _old man_ needs to beat your high score before the pizza arrives."


End file.
